He started the engine and I got in beside him. He turned up the road in the direction of the barn where the barn-dance had been.
I felt irrational resentment against Gordon. He hadn’t let me know how serious my situation was. He had saved me from one noose, only to lead me into another. Then I remembered the serious warnings I had laughed off. I had been so glad to get out of the frying-pan that I didn’t believe in the fire. Probably I should be grateful to him for not putting handcuffs on me.
We passed the barn and the dancers were gone and the fiddler had stopped playing.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To the bootlegger’s.”
“The whisperer?”
“Yes. I’m going to trace the two drunks who left when Ruth Esch did.”
“What if you don’t catch them? Do I stand the chance of being convicted of Schneider’s murder?”
Gordon avoided a direct answer. “We’ll catch them. Every policeman in the state will be on the lookout for them. And I’m going to telegraph their descriptions to every police station in the Middle West.”
“Don’t omit Canada. They just came from Canada and may try to go back.”
“Where in Canada?”
“Ruth Esch wrote me a letter three days ago from Kirkland Lake, Ontario.”
“Have you still got it?”
I felt in my pockets. The letter was gone.
“No, I must have lost it. Or Peter took it.”
“You say the Esch woman wrote you a letter. Is she a friend of yours?” He shifted his black eyes from the road for a moment to glance at me.
“She was. In Germany, years ago. Not any more.”
I told him what he needed to know about Ruth Esch, including a complete physical description. Like Gordon, I wanted to catch her, but I dreaded meeting her again. There is a story in the Heimskringla about a Norse king who married a witch. She died but her body remained warm and beautiful. The king went mad and kept vigil by her beautiful body in the belief that she was sleeping and would come back to him. After years of vigil, he awoke from his madness and the body was crawling with worms.
I dreaded meeting her again. But I was going to have to travel a long way before I met her again.
I said to Gordon, “I heard a news broadcast on your radio. The police are after me for Schneider’s murder.”
“I told you.”
“Yes, but not so vividly as the newscaster. Are you going to turn me in?”
“I have to,” Gordon said. “In any case, it’s the safest place for you.”
“Because Michigan doesn’t inflict the death penalty? I want to know whether it can be proved that Schneider was a spy, even if you don’t catch the other two.”
“Maybe it can. He hasn’t been investigated yet.”
“What have you got on him?”
“Everything you’ve given us, but that isn’t enough without evidence. Naturally we’ll investigate him thoroughly now. Have you any further leads?”
“I’ve told you everything I know. At least I think I have.” Something was struggling towards the surface of my unconscious. I could feel it moving but I couldn’t see what it was. Probably a duck-billed platypus, I thought, and tried to relax.
It was farther to the bootlegger’s by road than it was on foot. We had to follow the side road until it reached the main road and then turn back towards the old house.
Before we reached the main road we passed a patch of woods on the right side of the road, and I saw something that made me suspicious of my unconscious again. Two men wearing bright plaid blankets around them and colored leaves in their hair came running out of the woods towards the car, yelling and waving their arms.
Gordon stopped the car and we sat and watched them climb over the fence and jump across the ditch to the road.
“Can you give us a lift to town?” one of them asked. He stuck his head in the open window on my side and I saw the tear-stains on his face and recognized him.
I said to Gordon. “These are the two men that left the bootlegger’s when Ruth Esch did.”
“Get into the back seat,” Gordon said and they climbed in, clutching their blankets around them.
“I’ve got to get to the police,” the weepy one said. “My car has been stolen.”
Gordon turned around in his seat and said, “I’m a police agent. Where have you been?”
“In the woods, sleeping,” said the other babe in the woods. I turned and looked at them. Their eyes were like boiled Brussels sprouts and their faces were sicklied o’er with the pale cast of a hangover.
“On a camping party, boys?” Gordon said. “I was just going to start looking for you.”
“Hell, no,” said the man who wept, beyond irony. “Our clothes were stolen. And my car.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears, and I reached for a handkerchief.
“By a red-headed woman?”
“How did you know? Say, did you catch her?”
“Not yet,” Gordon said. He started the car and in a minute we turned into the main road.
“Well, you better get busy. I want to see that dame put away for a good long time. She asks me for a lift and she looks like a lady and naturally I give her one at that time of morning. But after we drive down the road a piece, she pulls a gun on us and makes us get out of the car and take off our clothes and drives away with the car and the clothes. First time a hitch-hiker ever fooled me and, by Jesus, it’s the last–”
Gordon cut him off. “Why didn’t you report this theft sooner?”
The other man spoke, “Well, Johnnie here was awful broken up, and when she took his car he went off in the woods and was sick.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Johnnie said, “I was just sad. My dear wife, and then my dear car–”
“Yes, he was,” the other man said. “I went to find him and he had passed out. I couldn’t wake him up so I covered him with leaves and let him sleep. I couldn’t leave him in that condition, so I kept guard over him–”
“You passed out, too,” Johnnie said.
“Oh, I did not. I–”
“I’m taking you to the local police,” Gordon said. “They’ll ask you to swear out a warrant for the woman’s arrest.”
“Nothing I’d like better,” said Johnnie. The tears of things were not affecting him so strongly now, and he seemed to have given up the idea of weeping.
A minute later I felt like weeping myself.
Gordon turned down the lane under the trees, and I saw the old barn and the dingy house. The barn looked even worse by day, like a corpse in sunlight. The sight of the house with the paint peeling off was not improved by the black police car which stood in front of it.
As we drew up behind it, a sharp-nosed man in plain clothes came out of the house and let out a combination of a whoop and a sneer.
Haggerty came down the porch steps with the speed of a weasel and said to me, “Get out.”
I got out.
He said, “Hold out your hands.”
In the dazed hope that he might be going to give me something to eat, I held out my hands. He snapped handcuffs on my wrists.
CHAPTER XII
THE BLANKET BOYS GOGGLED and Johnnie whined, “Say, he was in here just before that woman came in. I bet he’s one of the gang.”
I said, “Have a good cry about it,” and turned to Haggerty: “If you arrest me, Sergeant, I’m going to sue you for false arrest.”
Haggerty pushed his face at me as if he intended to stab me with his nose. “Yeah? What do you mean, professor, false arrest?”
I said, “I didn’t kill Schneider. He was killed by his son and a woman called Ruth Esch. The same woman that stole this man’s car. Take these things off me and go and catch them.” Go and catch a falling star, my mind chattered. Go and catch whooping cough.